Themed Concerts

Scott Hardie | April 20, 2008
I'm pleased to introduce Themed Concerts to Rock Block. These are silly matches built around a theme, affecting the cards that you play with and more. Because the cards are chosen for you, the score doesn't count in the larger game, and you can't unlock achievements with it, so this is strictly for fun. You can, however, receive a free R2 today by playing in a themed concert.

I've wanted to have something like this since the early days of planning the game. We've come up with a few themed matches on our own, but this takes it to another level. I hope to have a few more at GooCon.

There are ten themes in the system now, though some may remain inaccessible to you until you meet certain conditions. I intend to add many more tomorrow and in the future. What themes would you like to see? Or what changes to this system?

Steve West | April 20, 2008
Theme ideas off the top of my pointy head:
Billboard #1's
Facial hair
Hits with more than one band
Jail time
Tattoos
Hits in three decades

Amy Austin | April 20, 2008
aka...

"Dick's Picks" (as in Clark/American Bandstand/Top 40) or "Chartbusters"
"Tom, Dick & Hairy"
not sure how you mean it, so... "We Are the World"? or "Play It Again, Sam"
"Jailhouse Rock" (that's an easy one!)
"I Love Mom"
"Older Than Keith Richards" (or his mom?)

Steve West | April 20, 2008
Very funny. "Hits with more than one band" would be like Cher who charted with Sonny and Cher and also as a solo artist. Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney with their numerous band incarnations etc.

Amy Austin | April 20, 2008
Ohhh... okay, then...

"More Lives Than Madonna"?
"How Ya' Like Me Now?"?
"And Now... For Something Completely Different..."?
or, wait... how about...

"Paul McCartney Gives You Wings!" (as opposed to Red Bull -- background could even *be* a can of Red Bull... BRILLIANT!)

Lori Lancaster | April 20, 2008
[hidden by request]

Aaron Shurtleff | April 21, 2008
Hey, Scott, is it just my computer, or is the font slightly larger on the side menus on the Themed Concert page?

And I don't think the theme not appearing in bold after you win it is working for me either.

Aaron Shurtleff | April 21, 2008
If I try to start a Hall of Fame themed concert, I get this error. Is this the place to put this?

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/gootc/public_html/rb_themed_concerts.php on line 21

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/gootc/public_html/rb_themed_concerts.php:21) in /home/gootc/public_html/includes/functions/redirect.php on line 7

Aaron Shurtleff | April 21, 2008
But, the concert showed up, so I don't know what the error was for. Big white screen. Very few words.

Amy Austin | April 21, 2008
I had a strange error, too... but it only happened when I challenged Aaron... (hmmm)

Scott Hardie | April 21, 2008
Weird. I think it's fixed now. Thanks.

Aaron Shurtleff | April 21, 2008
How about "Rap: The Vinyl Frontier" for bands that have crossed over to rap at some point (Aerosmith, Anthrax, Biohazard, Korn, Blondie, etc.). I think Sugarhill Gang is in there too. Beastie Boys? Run DMC? (And yes, that's a play on Space: The Final Frontier)

We could do something similar for Country crossovers (Jimmy Buffett, Bon Jovi, Reba McIntyre, etc.) I haven't thought it through enough to know if we have enough bands for these two, but I think we might off-hand. We could call it "Little Concert House on the Prairie"? Or something. OK, that's just wrong. Sorry.

Any of the decades could work on their own, as could genres ("Metal Shop", "Punked", "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow"? :)

At some point, maybe rivalries? Like 80's Hair bands vs. 90's Grunge? Each player could get randomly assigned to one or the other, and then maybe tabulate the results and see which would "win" overall for a given period? I think that might be a bit much, but what do I know?

Amy Austin | April 21, 2008
Cool ideas. ;-) (Even "Little Concert House..." has some potential...) ;-D

Scott Hardie | April 23, 2008
The hardest part about making themes, besides tracking down decent large images to use as the stage, is deciding who makes the cut. Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd are shoo-ins for the color theme, but what about Guns & Roses, or Iron Maiden, or Pearl Jam? Do ABBA and Mamas & Papas count as female-dominated bands, and what about Sonic Youth?

That's what keeps me from jumping in to the most obvious themes, those based on genre of rock. R&B is pretty straightforward (even Pat Boone makes that cut), but what about, say, alternative rock? Nirvana and Soundgarden, sure, but are Rage Against the Machine alternative? Is Jamiroquai alternative? Then there's punk – Big Black called themselves punk even if nobody else did, and do pop-punk bands like Green Day qualify? I'm not an expert on rock history, but I feel like I need to get these right or close to right, for the good of the game. That's silly, since themes count for nothing, but it's still true. :-\

My original plan for themes was to let players tag the bands any way they wanted and then create themed concerts around their tags. I decided to go with a more orderly system, controlled by yours truly, to avoid a long list of meaningless themes, as long as players could suggest new themes here. Maybe I need to ask players whether certain bands qualify for certain themes, or create a poll to that effect.

Amy Austin | April 23, 2008
I like the tagging idea! But polls are cool, too...

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2008
Fyi, turn confirmation has been added as an option, if you want it.

Tony Peters | April 27, 2008
Greenday is certainly NOT punk though the share a lot of the attributes of punk music especially the 3 cord melodies

Scott Hardie | May 1, 2008
The hitmakers-in-three-decades theme was one of my original ideas, also suggested by Steve above, but I've had little luck finding a list of performers who pulled it off. Wikipedia has an incomplete list. My alternate plan is to research every band in the game to find out, which could take hours. :-\

Scott Hardie | May 2, 2008
As I add more themes to the game, the list will keep getting busier.

There is no in-game benefit to winning a particular theme.

One solution solves both problems: Prerequisites. Now you must win a certain theme, like Crayola Rocks, to access another one, like Animal Farm. The more you play, the more you get to play.

Amy Austin | May 9, 2008
Just another silly suggestion here... just for kicks and grins, really... but was thinking about the initial decision to include themed concert stats being changed to not (appropriately so, I believe), and thought it would be fun to at least be able to see those stats, even if they aren't part of the "official" RB record -- like, for instance, I know that somewhere you can see your track record with the Devil... a completely meaningless statistic that's just fun (probably in a sick sort of way) to see. 1) These two venues have a lot in common, actually, with sometimes really disparate odds issued at random, and 2) seems a shame not to be able to see the track record where you may be playing the vast majority of concerts now (due to laziness or whatever)!

Like I said... just a silly suggestion. ;-)

Erik Bates | June 10, 2008
[hidden by request]

Tony Peters | June 10, 2008
so far for me there is a R1 and an R2 theme so I'm sure Scott is building each

Scott Hardie | June 10, 2008
Keep swapping cards in the Card Exchange, Erik. In the meantime, you can manually create a concert like that.

Scott Hardie | June 11, 2008
Originally, I programmed themed concerts so that you and your opponent had to have seen ten of the same bands in that theme in order to play it. I didn't want it to be a vehicle for revealing new cards on the site, although you could peek at others' themed concerts to get an occasional reveal.

When I reprogrammed the free card giveaway last week, I changed it so that new bands are given out at a steady pace. They're always the first to go as long as some are available. It has a month or two of backlog to process, then it will be down to roughly one per day. When this happens, there will be few or no unrevealed cards in the game at any time, for players paying attention.

So I wonder: Do themed concerts need to keep the secret any more? Would it be ok if you started a themed concert with ten bands at random and discovered some new ones in the process? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I could wait a month or two until we've exposed the backlog if that helps.

Russ Wilhelm | June 11, 2008
I like the idea of keeping them as bands that have been seen by both players before. It gives incentive to have regular concerts played, which have been overshadowed lately.

Amy Austin | June 11, 2008
I thought that was what the new Card Exchange rules were supposed to do (incentive to have regular concerts played). I think it's nice to see cards revealed in the themes, since there've been a whole lot of cards that go unseen for a very long time, no matter how much you stay on top of the concerts played, due to those cards not being brought out by the players who own them or a general lack of playership with said owners.

Scott Hardie | June 15, 2008
There's a new feature on the Themed Concerts page, linked at the top in the intro copy: A chart of potential opponents for each theme and who has won/played each. It's really only useful if you like to offer theme challenges to players who haven't played them before, but it seems several of us do.

Scott Hardie | June 5, 2009
Fyi, there's a server problem that's interfering with the themed concerts page, and possibly other RB pages that I haven't noticed yet. It causes the page to stop loading and just appear as a blank white page. I've put in a temporary solution that should let you continue using the page for now, and I'll find a permanent solution this weekend. Please let me know if you have any trouble with it. Thanks.

Scott Hardie | June 6, 2009
The issue should be fixed now. If you have any problems like I described, please just send me a note. Thank you.

Scott Hardie | June 7, 2009
Yay, now we're having the same problem with Heaven & Hell, and the same solution won't work this time. If you experience trouble with the page, keep trying several times, and alert me if you still can't get it to work. Thanks.

Amy Austin | June 7, 2009
Scott, I don't know if you've noticed or not that Sellout does not work with Psychedelia as it should. I think that my tournament concert with JoAnna is the first time I've played them together (or at least been able to take notice without all the other factors in play), and Psychedelia renders Sellout useless, at least for all subsequent moves.

Scott Hardie | June 7, 2009
Psychedelia renders a lot of play rules useless, like Same/Plus/Multiply. It often neutralizes any benefit they might provide. It's the only rule I've considered removing from the game just because it's so annoying.

Amy Austin | June 7, 2009
Well, I still enjoy it... and the other rules aren't useless if they change along with Psychedelia... but then I guess when they do it undoes the capture? Okay... I'm getting too confused about it now.

Scott Hardie | June 7, 2009
Yes. That's one of the nuisances about Psychedelia; it rewrites history each turn. It's an evil little rule.

Scott Hardie | June 8, 2009
I might be able to rewrite it so that the six bonuses float randomly (and visibly) around the stage until a card is played on a space, at which time the bonus status of that space is locked in and no longer changes, and the other spaces continue to randomize until they are filled in as well. That would preserve the "trippy" spirit of the rule and be more playable. Does that appeal to anyone?

Amy Austin | June 8, 2009
I'd have to see it in action -- I get brain strain when I try to visualize anything too much more than one or two plays ahead... that's why I'm not so great at this game. ;-p

Steve West | June 8, 2009
Whoa. That in itself sounds trippy. I'm like Amy and am having difficulty visualizing what you're describing.

Scott Hardie | June 9, 2009
Right now, the bonuses exist on six of the nine spaces at random, but they are only visible when a card is placed on one of them because they're pointless otherwise. Their locations are randomized each time another turn is played, until the final turn when they are permanently locked in. This has the effect of changing history, since the board is redrawn and the results are recalculated each time, as if the bonuses had always been there.

What I propose instead is that the same six bonuses continue to float around at random, and are visible on empty spaces. They would be re-randomized each time a turn is played. However, if a card lands on one of the bonuses, it gets frozen in that place and stops moving around. The other five continue shifting until a card lands on one of them and locks it in place, at which time there are four moving around, and so on until all six are locked in. This would keep history from being rewritten, since a +2 at Downstage Left, once locked in, would remain a +2 at Downstage Left for the rest of the match.

I have no idea whether this would work, but it sounds feasible. It has the added benefit of not breaking old concerts; I wouldn't need to change a thing about them. I don't know if other people find Psychedelia as annoying as I do, so I don't know what kind of demand there would be for changing it like this. Thanks for the feedback.

Aaron Shurtleff | June 9, 2009
What if the 6 spots are randomized each match, but don't shift? It would still be trippy, but it would have the added benefit of being easier to program (I would imagine...I don't know). I think either one would be cool beans with me, but I don't necessarily want to see it changed from what it is now...

And I don't think it renders Same/Plus/Multiply useless, it just adds more difficulty in using them, because the Psychedelia just changes the values...they can still work if the sides permit, can't they?

Amy Austin | June 9, 2009
Except for the suggestion part, ditto on what Aaron said.